Police Farce

Police rushed a pair of officers in a marked car to a park after two young sisters were spotted picking daffodils.

Sienna Marengo, four, was seen picking flowers with six-year-old stepsister Olivia in Poole, Dorset. A member of the public reported them to police and two constables attended and advised the girls’ mother, Jane Errington, that she and her partner, Marc Marengo, could be arrested for criminal damage.

The couple expressed anger at the “heavy-handed” response and accused police of wasting time.

Errington said the officers watched the family for 20 minutes before speaking to them. She said Sienna had been left too upset to return to the public park, fearing being “taken away by the police”.

The family had been enjoying the spring sunshine with a walk through Whitecliff Park on Sunday when the girls broke off and started to pick daffodils. Errington, who owns a property maintenance business, said: “The little ones had been riding their bikes but after a while they got bored and went to play in the daffodils.

“I didn’t see them pick any flowers, but the next thing we knew a police patrol car pulled up and the officers in it started watching us.

“We didn’t know what was going on and after about 20 minutes my partner started feeling very uncomfortable. Two male police officers then came up to us, saying they’d had a report of flowers being ripped up. They said we had committed a crime.

“The little ones were really upset and started crying. It was quite frightening for them. They did have daffodils in their hands – I’d say about 20 between them – and they had been picking them up and sorting them out like children do.

“If we’d seen it, we would have stopped them, but all it needed was for whoever complained to have approached us and made us aware. I had to explain to them that the police are friendly and it was just a mistake. I explained to them that the flowers were there for everybody and that in the future we will leave them there.

“I just felt it was unnecessary and upsetting. Surely the police have better ways to spend their time and taxpayers’ money?”

Whitecliff Park is owned by the council and therefore removing property from it is an offence.

Very nice plundering of one of my all time favourite poems, cheesy as it is.

Hideous story. Poms often comment that Australia seems over-regulated but this tale reminds me of being in a London park with a date and leaning in on her sideways, quasi-leaning over bordering on arguably lying down, for less than 30 seconds, when a little brat in a uniform walked over and told me I had to sit up straight on park benches.

Not exaggerating one iota. To quote someone I just read in a thread on The Drum, it buggared belief…

When there’s flowers in the hands of little lassies in the park,
No mens rea, just what kids do in the sun
(… In the sun)
We deploy there quickly then sit on our arses in the car,
We’d rather that than after villains run
(… Villains run).

We’d rather risk a beating with a bouquet than a brick
A vandal might throw, or a good king hit,
(…Good king hit),
And we’ll bravely suffer slings and arrows from the likes of DEM,
Accusing our skulls of being full of ..it,
(…Full of ..it)

I know it’s just the Nuremberg Defence but the poor coppers were just doing their job.

Yeah. I get the feeling the cops sat there and watched them for 30 minutes because they were hoping the family would leave or the kids would stop picking flowers so they wouldn’t have to embarrass themselves.

Pavlov, the Guardian piece said the informer was “a relative’ of the local Conservative MP. Probably didn’t like those rowdy working class children cluttering up her lovely, middle class park (Poole is the posh end of Bournemouth effectively, though it’s a town in itself. The middle orders live in Westbourne, the coffin dodgers retire to Bournemouth proper and wealthy families live in Poole, or if exceptionally rich, Sandbachs. I used to work in Bournemouth and the local Meeting House was in Westbourne – I was about thirty years the youngest there).

All they really needed to do is to talk nicely to what are, after all, children. “Hello little girl, could you please stop picking the flowers? They’re for everybody, so it’s not allowed to pick them.”